Richard J. McCarthy: Seeing life through lens of golden possibilities

The sun rises in the northeast in this view from a hill in Florence, Massachusetts. Photo by Patrick Rowan The Republican | Patrick Rowan

A few months back, I was in Florida. I was taking a walk in a wealthy area, asking myself important questions like where the line is between what would be called a “large home” and what would be called a “mansion.”

I came upon the campus of what a sign told me was a “preparatory school.” When I say “campus,” I do mean a campus. The layout seemed as extensive and as architecturally effete as the campus of a small college which might be your son’s or daughter’s first-choice school.

I was looking at a section of the campus from the other side of a wrought-iron fence. It included a lacrosse field, on which young men were running back and forth practicing, a track and field area, where a co-ed pole vaulting practice was taking place, and an area of outdoor water for swimming. The reason that I say “area of outdoor water” instead of “pool” is that the word “pool” does not get its arms around what I saw.

I counted no less then 22 (!) lanes of “golden” water, the word “golden” not referring to any pigment of color, but rather to the sunshine and promise reflected therein.

Each of the lanes had several swimmers, and there were sufficient coaches standing above them to assure that no stroke would go without an attempt to improve it.

Sometimes using a single word to describe a scene is a process of reduction that doesn’t do justice to all that one beholds. At other times, one word seems to be an ample basket in which to put your impressions. The word “privilege” seemed at the moment to be the basket for what I saw in front of me.

There was a security guard at the gate of the campus, a man of color who looked to be in his 20s or 30s. I said to him, “Quite a place isn’t it?”

And, he responded with enthusiasm, “Yeah, it is.”

We had a conversation. He seemed to have the same attitude about his job that I once had working a similar job for the Seattle Supersonics (now moved to Oklahoma City and called the Thunder) of the National Basketball Association – an appreciation for the bird’s-eye proximity the role gave me to such goings-on.

With a certain wonderment in his voice, he told me that it was a day prep school and had an array of facilities which I couldn’t see from where I was standing. They include a theater with which he seemed quite take. He confirmed my suspicion that the school had a healthy tuition.

As he was talking, a mythical exchange between the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who is perhaps best known in modern culture as the author of the novel “The Great Gatsby,” and his contemporary, Ernest Hemingway, came to mind.

The reason I call it “mythical” is that though the story depicts an exchange of words between the two writers, in truth it is cut-and-pasted from some words, taken out of context, that each wrote.

Anyway, in the lore, Fitzgerald, whose works serve as a chronicle (and some would say idolization) of the lives of the young, beautiful and wealthy in the 1920s, says “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”

Hemingway, who was a realist and often wrote simply yet profoundly about people getting “a thumb in the eye” in one way or another, is reputed to have retorted, “Yes, they have more money.”

I also thought of the futures lying at the feet of the kids running back-and-forth on those athletic fields I saw, ascending over pole-vaulting bars and gliding through sun-sparkled, vigilantly monitored waters.

I thought of how when you are that age, the golden ring of your future seems like it will always be there for the taking; how you can fail to grasp that one day the carousel ride of adolescence will be over and you can be left with no youth and no gold.

And, I thought of how when you are that age, despite what those who have come before you say, your heart can tell you that being young is as much a permanent characteristic of yourself as the color of your eyes; how you don’t really comprehend that you are like everyone else who has ever lived, merely a guest passing through, like “the sun that is young once only.”

This time the word “possibilities” seemed to be a basket in which to put my thoughts about what I saw in the lives of the young men and women at play in front of me.

Anyway, the security guard and I finished our conversation and said our good-byes.

As I was walking away, he said, “This place is like a movie.”

I responded, “Yeah, a movie that you and me aren’t in.”

We both shared a knowing laugh and went back to our lives. 

Richard J. McCarthy grew up in Springfield; he still makes his home in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. 